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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
The McCain campaign found out that they couldn't turn the page on the economic crisis so they decided to just burn the book instead.
"Leaving the law aside and dealing only with what is right and what is wrong (because morality and laws don't always match), why would it not be okay for ole Max to have girls 16 and 17 in his films..."
You're exactly right. Eighteen is, in fact, an arbitrary line. It was drawn by temperance advocates in the 1880s in response to a sensationalized, and largely fictional, white slavery scare. Prior to that, it varied from state to state, but was usually somewhere between 12 and 16. Personally, I think that 16 is, biologically and psychologically, closer to the mark of actual adulthood than 18.
However, 18 is the line that has been drawn, and the woman in question was, in fact, over that line. Thus she was, according to both the law and her own testimony, a consenting adult.
ondelette (October 6, 2008 12:36 PM ):
If I've misinterpreted Alice Miller, then okay, I may be wrong. I only read what she posted on her website about torture, which was brief.
Based on what I've read of both Alice Miller and Darius Rejali, Rejali's work is primarily descriptive of torture, whereas Miller's work is primarily explanatory of its wellsprings.
Although I haven't read his book, I've now read two of his essays one of which was published here at Salon (http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2004/06/18/torture_1/index3.html).
What can you cite in his book or essays that explains why people torture their fellow human beings, rather than just describing its manifestations throughout history?
I think that 16 is, biologically and psychologically, closer to the mark of actual adulthood than 18.
However, 18 is the line that has been drawn, and the woman in question was, in fact, over that line. Thus she was, according to both the law and her own testimony, a consenting adult.
Age of consent for sexual activity with peers should be about 16 in my opinion. However, I would draw a line at sex with people much older due to their more sophisticated ability to manipulate younger people, their likely superiority of position or power, and to those activities in which profit may be a motive.
Please tell who you reference concerning adolescent psychological development. Even SCOTUS, in deciding a death penalty case, took into account recent understanding of the development of the brains of young people. In short, most psychologists now agree that THE BRAIN lacks sufficient development in most people between the ages of adolescence to about age 22 or so to be able to adequately judge circumstances. In short, girls of 16 may look grown up but, psychologically, they are not. Myelin, which assists impulse control among other tasks, is not fully formed in the brains of sixteen year olds or even eighteen year olds.
Because acting in a porn movie can not only put them at risk for exploitation but also because they are not able to adequately judge how short term, seemingly profitable decision may affect the way others may perceive them as long as their faces remain recognizable they are better off being protected. Socially, culturally, and in terms of future conventional employability, they will remain at a disadvantage for a very long time, looking over their shoulders, if they try to get out of that life, at a past that may catch up with them. They often, because of their pasts, feel compelled to lie to boyfriends, parents, friends, husbands, co-workers, and employers.
I, for instance, as a job developer, have tried to find jobs for women who have done sex work. Blowing the likes of Max Hardcore in a movie is likely to get them shit in the real world, so they must either lie on their resumes (Do you approve of such lying?), or leave a large blank in their work histories (Would you hire such a person?), and suffer the consequences of low or no employment.
Furthermore, I would like to inquire if you have any daughters over the age of 16? I ask this because, unless you are female or have tried to bring up daughters, you probably know nothing about the inner lives of adolescent girls. They are almost all clueless romantics, too many of them looking for love from the wrong people, and seeking admiration and validation of their physical selves with no idea how to get it in a way that is truly to their advantage.
Also, if you are about to offer some evolutionary psychology crap about how men are attracted to young females due to hip waist ratio, you can save it. None of that says anything about the individual best interests of said females.
Even Philip Zimbardo (The Lucifer Effect) has no adequate explanation of why some people are vulnerabe to becoming torturers and others are not that takes into account their childhood training. Alice Miller is one who actually addresses this.
I also believe that childhood training that makes one able to become a torturer can also produce victims. Abuse is always about power, whether it be parental power, pedagogical power, institutional power, or power at the highest levels of government. Mere democracy never protects against abuses because minorities/weaker populations can always be abused by the majority/stronger population. Only a mindset that is culturally liberal and acknowledges a duty of care will reject torture.
I believe that the victim/abuser are either side of the same causal "coin," if you will. Physical abuse, emotional/psychological abuse (such as humiliation), and sexual abuse all have one thing in common: They require that the perpetrator learn obedience to authority at an early age. They require either a power distance between the child and the authority or some other factor that creates an inability to say NO or to resist.
Institutionalized authority generally rejects resistence by victims because victims who resist challenge the authority of the status quo by challenging their abusers. The purpose of the abuser to the system is to keep order. Thus master must control his slave, a husband should control his wife, a woman should control her children, older siblings are required to control younger ones and so on. Currently, the minions who are torturers for the Bush Administration are doing the clear will of that administration and The People by controlling "terrorists." None of this happens without the approval of the powerful and the complicity of the obedient populace. Just as your neighbor cannot beat his wife or child until they scream without your complicity not to report the abuse or the police's complicity not arrest, or the courts complicity not to punish.
Here are two links.
First, some writing of Alice Miller:
http://www.naturalchild.com/alice_miller/political.html
Second, an interesting examination of dissociation:
http://thesecularspirit.com/text/torture.html
To go on a bit, a culture that acknowledges a duty of care does not shrug off the exploitation of anyone based upon the notion that market forces should prevail or that some amount of exploitation is somehow permissible for particular populations, such as young girls who wander into the world of sex work due to vulnerablities of age and previous circumstances (usually abuse).
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
